Meltwater debuts GenAI Lens for comprehensive brand monitoring across AI platforms

Meltwater announced on July 29, 2025, the launch of GenAI Lens, a monitoring solution that tracks brand representation across major artificial intelligence platforms including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, and Deepseek. The San Francisco-based company positions this as the industry's first comprehensive tool for understanding how brands appear in AI-generated content.

According to Meltwater, the solution addresses a growing challenge for marketing professionals who must monitor an expanding array of communication channels. As artificial intelligence becomes more influential in content creation and information dissemination, companies need visibility into how their brands are portrayed by large language models.

The timing reflects increasing industry concern about AI's impact on brand perception. A March 2025 report from Gartner forecasts that by 2026, approximately 30% of brand perception will be shaped by generative AI content rather than traditional media sources such as social media, news outlets, and online reviews. This statistic underscores the urgency for brands to understand their representation in AI-generated responses.

"Marketing, Comms, and PR professionals face a growing challenge with more channels to manage and even more to monitor," according to the announcement. The company noted that until now, brands have lacked visibility into how they're represented across generative AI platforms, creating potential exposure to misinformation, outdated content, and missed opportunities to strengthen brand presence.

Meltwater's GenAI Lens solution monitors and analyzes responses from AI tools, offering transparency into what information is being shared and where the underlying language models source their data. Users can track brand, product, or competitor mentions across more than 90% of LLMs, providing a comprehensive view of brand representation alongside traditional news and social media data.

The platform introduces several key capabilities. It offers increased brand visibility in AI environments by understanding how brands are represented through aggregated results across major LLMs, filling what the company describes as a critical blind spot. The system provides faster detection of reputational risks by identifying early signs of misinformation, negative sentiment, or misleading narratives, giving teams time to respond before issues escalate.

For strategic communication planning, the tool uses trend and emotion analysis from AI search outputs to inform PR, brand, and content strategies based on how audiences engage with generative AI. The competitive intelligence features monitor how competitors are portrayed and uncover opportunities, industry trends, or emerging topics, helping companies stay ahead of the narrative and refine positioning.

Additional features include at-a-glance insights through advanced visualizations that show brand sentiment, emotion, key phrases, people, products, and things mentioned alongside citations. The platform also reduces time to insight by providing customizable built-in prompt templates to launch targeted monitoring within minutes.

Chris Hackney, Chief Product Officer at Meltwater, emphasized the fundamental shift in how people discover and understand information. "Visits to AI chatbots grew nearly 81% in the last year alone, signaling these tools are becoming a primary source of discovery," Hackney stated. He positioned the solution as empowering PR, marketing, and communications professionals to proactively monitor, analyze, and respond to narratives emerging from AI engines.

The announcement highlights how AI search has already transformed advertising landscapes, with research showing significant changes in how marketers approach visibility strategies. According to Hackney, the tool provides clients with a strategic advantage by enabling them to protect brand reputation, craft smarter communication strategies, and move at the speed of AI-driven conversations.

As a global leader in listening and monitoring, Meltwater commits to growing source models, deepening analytics, and maintaining comprehensive coverage as new LLMs emerge in this dynamic field. The company analyzes approximately 1 billion pieces of content daily and transforms them into insights for its 27,000 global customers across 50 offices on six continents.

The announcement comes as marketing agencies have proven that AI responses can be manipulated through targeted content, highlighting the importance of monitoring brand representation in AI systems. The GenAI Lens solution addresses this vulnerability by providing comprehensive tracking capabilities across multiple AI platforms.

The platform's technical architecture enables monitoring across what Meltwater describes as more than 90% of large language models currently in use. This comprehensive coverage is particularly significant given the rapid proliferation of AI tools and their increasing influence on public perception and decision-making processes.

For marketing professionals, the tool's ability to track competitor mentions represents a strategic advantage in understanding market positioning. The platform can identify how competing brands are portrayed and highlight opportunities for improved positioning or messaging refinement. This competitive intelligence capability extends beyond traditional social media and news monitoring to encompass the growing influence of AI-generated content.

The sentiment analysis capabilities provide marketers with deeper understanding of how their brands are perceived in AI-generated responses. This functionality goes beyond simple mention tracking to analyze emotional context and tone, providing insights that can inform strategic communication decisions.

The emergence of GenAI Lens reflects broader industry trends toward AI-powered marketing tools and platforms. Major technology companies have expanded advertising capabilities into AI-powered interfaces, making brand monitoring across these platforms increasingly critical for comprehensive marketing strategies.

The platform's prompt template system acknowledges the specialized nature of AI monitoring, providing pre-built queries designed to capture relevant brand mentions and competitive intelligence. This approach reduces the technical barrier for marketing teams seeking to implement AI monitoring without extensive machine learning expertise.

Meltwater's announcement positions the company at the intersection of traditional media monitoring and emerging AI technologies. The integration of AI monitoring with existing social media and news tracking capabilities provides a unified platform for comprehensive brand intelligence across both traditional and emerging communication channels.

The global nature of Meltwater's operations, with 2,200 employees across six continents, positions the company to address international variations in AI platform usage and brand representation challenges. Different geographic markets may demonstrate varying patterns of AI adoption and platform preference, requiring localized monitoring strategies.

Timeline

• March 2025: Gartner releases forecast predicting 30% of brand perception will be shaped by generative AI content by 2026
• July 22, 2025: Google Analytics launches MCP server for AI-powered data conversations
• July 29, 2025: Meltwater announces GenAI Lens launch for comprehensive AI platform monitoring
• July 10, 2025: WordStream study reveals 20% error rate in AI responses for PPC strategy
• July 30, 2025: Dailymotion launches conversational ad format powered by AI technology

Key Terms Explained

Artificial Intelligence (AI): Computer systems capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence, including understanding natural language, recognizing patterns, and making decisions. In marketing contexts, AI systems analyze vast amounts of data to generate insights, create content, and respond to user queries. The technology has fundamentally altered how consumers discover information, with AI chatbots experiencing 81% growth in visits over the past year according to Meltwater's data.

Large Language Models (LLMs): Advanced artificial intelligence systems trained on extensive text datasets to understand and generate human-like responses to queries. These models, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and others, have become primary sources of information for consumers seeking answers to questions. Meltwater's GenAI Lens monitors more than 90% of these systems to track brand representation across the AI landscape.

Brand Monitoring: The systematic tracking and analysis of brand mentions, sentiment, and representation across various media channels and platforms. Traditional brand monitoring focused on social media, news outlets, and online reviews, but the emergence of AI platforms has created new blind spots that require specialized tools. GenAI Lens extends this capability to include AI-generated content where brands may be mentioned or discussed.

Generative AI: Artificial intelligence technology that creates new content, including text, images, and responses, based on patterns learned from training data. This technology powers chatbots and search assistants that increasingly influence public perception and decision-making. Gartner forecasts that generative AI will shape 30% of brand perception by 2026, making monitoring across these platforms critical for marketing professionals.

Sentiment Analysis: The computational analysis of emotions, opinions, and attitudes expressed in text to determine whether mentions are positive, negative, or neutral. In the context of AI monitoring, sentiment analysis helps brands understand not just where they are mentioned in AI responses, but how they are characterized emotionally. This capability extends beyond simple mention counting to provide deeper insights into brand perception.

Competitive Intelligence: The systematic collection and analysis of information about competitors' activities, positioning, and market presence. GenAI Lens enables companies to monitor how competitors are portrayed in AI-generated responses, identifying opportunities for improved positioning or messaging refinement. This intelligence helps brands stay ahead of market narratives and competitive developments.

Reputational Risk: The potential for negative events or perceptions to damage a brand's reputation and business performance. In AI environments, reputational risks include misinformation, outdated content, or misleading narratives that may appear in AI-generated responses. Early detection capabilities allow marketing teams to respond before issues escalate and affect broader brand perception.

Content Creation: The process of developing written, visual, or multimedia materials for marketing and communication purposes. As AI becomes more influential in content generation, brands must understand how their content is being interpreted and referenced by AI systems. The shift toward AI-driven content creation has made monitoring across these platforms essential for comprehensive brand management.

Media Intelligence: The collection, analysis, and interpretation of information from various media sources to inform business decisions and strategy development. Meltwater's approach combines traditional media monitoring with AI platform tracking to provide comprehensive visibility into brand representation across both conventional and emerging communication channels.

Digital Marketing: Marketing strategies and tactics that utilize digital technologies and platforms to reach target audiences and achieve business objectives. The integration of AI monitoring into digital marketing reflects the evolution of consumer behavior toward AI-powered information discovery. Marketing professionals must adapt their strategies to account for how brands are represented in AI-generated content alongside traditional digital channels.

Summary

Who: Meltwater, a global media intelligence company with 27,000 customers and 2,200 employees across six continents, announced the new monitoring solution. Chris Hackney, Chief Product Officer, provided key statements about the platform's strategic importance.

What: GenAI Lens is an industry-first monitoring tool that tracks brand, competitor, and industry mentions across major AI assistants and large language models including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, and Deepseek. The platform covers more than 90% of LLMs and provides sentiment analysis, competitive intelligence, and reputational risk detection.

When: The announcement was made on July 29, 2025, reflecting growing industry urgency as AI chatbot visits grew 81% in the previous year and Gartner forecasts 30% of brand perception will be AI-shaped by 2026.

Where: The announcement originated from San Francisco, where Meltwater is headquartered, though the platform serves the company's global customer base across 50 offices on six continents.

Why: The tool addresses a critical blind spot in brand monitoring as generative AI becomes a primary source of information discovery. Companies needed visibility into how their brands are represented in AI-generated content to prevent misinformation, detect reputational risks early, and maintain competitive positioning in an AI-driven information landscape.